The crash killed 189 people after it fell out of the sky minutes after leaving Jakarta.

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) — The cockpit voice recorder of a Lion Air jet that crashed into the Java Sea in October, has finally been found, an Indonesian official said Monday, in a possible boost to the accident investigation.

Ridwan Djamaluddin, a deputy maritime minister, told reporters that the agency investigating the crash that killed 189 people had informed the ministry about the discovery.

"We got confirmation this morning from the National Transportation Safety Committee's chairman," he said.

Human remains were also discovered at the seabed location, Djamaluddin said.

The 2-month-old Boeing 737 MAX 8 jet plunged into the Java Sea just minutes after taking off from Jakarta on Oct. 29, killing everyone on board.

The cockpit data recorder was recovered within days and showed that the jet's airspeed indicator had malfunctioned on its last four flights.

If the voice recorder is undamaged, it could provide valuable additional information to investigators.

The New York Times on Tuesday reported at the end of November of a harrowing breakthrough in the investigation, citing information from Lion Air Flight 610's recovered flight data recorder, or black box, contained in a preliminary report prepared by Indonesian investigators.

The data in the report shows how hard the two pilots battled to stay in the air and the difficulties they faced in dealing with what may have been a rogue automated system, according to The Times.

Once Flight 610 was airborne, the pilots' control column began to shake, a precursor to a stall, The Seattle Times reported. Over the 13-minute flight, the pilots pushed back against the system more than 24 times as they sought to retake control until the plane plummeted into the sea at 450 mph, killing all 189 people on board.

Flight 610 was repeatedly pushed into a dive position most likely because of the automated system's malfunctioning sensors, a fault that began moments after it took off from Jakarta en route to Bali, The Times reported.

There were faulty readings even as the plane taxied onto the runway, and as soon as the wing flaps were retracted at 3,000 feet, the pilots were in a life-and-death tug-of-war with the new automated anti-stall system, The Seattle Times reported, citing the black-box data.

"The pilots fought continuously"

Rescue team members carry a body bag with the remains of a passenger of Lion Air flight JT610. REUTERS/Stringer

Capt. Nurcahyo Utomo, the head of the air accident subcommittee of Indonesia's National Transportation Safety Committee, has said that "the pilots fought continuously until the end of the flight."

The crash was the worst airline disaster in Indonesia since 1997, when 234 people died on a Garuda flight near Medan. In December 2014, an AirAsia flight from Surabaya to Singapore plunged into the sea, killing all 162 on board.

Lion Air is one of Indonesia's youngest airlines but has grown rapidly, flying to dozens of domestic and international destinations. It has been expanding aggressively in Southeast Asia, a fast-growing region of more than 600 million people.